Q&As

Mobile marketing is on the way, and it will usher in a Golden Age. Soon we’ll all be receiving rich-media ads over our Internet phones, being enticed by retailers with GPS capabilities to replace those worn jeans at 20% off, and watching TV—complete with ads—on our handsets. Get real.

More than 6,000 auto dealers are expected to participate in a joint promotion with the upcoming Disney-Pixar film “Cars.” Under the terms of the campaign, participating dealers send out direct mail letters offering two free tickets to “Cars” to vehicle prospects who visit showrooms. The letters are customized with the dealer’s name and address on them.

If you don’t understand your past, you won’t be aware of your future. That was the underlying theme of yesterday’s session on circulation planning and analysis, part of the Circulation Intensive here at the Annual Conference for Catalog & Multichannel Merchants (ACCM).

What does the future hold for you? Get ready for extreme marketing, according to the participants in yesterday

Online marketing firm ValueClick generated $117.3 million in revenue, more than double the $51.4 million it reported in first-quarter 2005. The company’s net income rose from $8.7 million to $9.8 million during the same period. The quarter ended March 31.

Weeks before the season premiere later this month of the firefighter drama Rescue Me, FX is giving consumers a peek at what’s to come.

When the most novel idea in the Incentive Show’s exhibit hall involves mucking out a horse stable, there’s trouble – big trouble – in premium land.

While it’s true that most of the show’s offerings aren’t geared toward direct marketers, in years past there were always a few items that could capture a DMers’ fancy. Not so this year. The hot trend on the exhibit hall floor was actually an echo of something that crashed and burned nearly five years ago.

Starbucks Corp. is redefining the casting couch. The mega coffee-maker has gone from staking a claim in the music business to dabbling in movies to announcing a partnership last week with the William Morris Agency to put an emphasis on identifying music, film and book projects that it can promote and distribute from its stores. The effort is a bid to enhance the overall entertainment experience for its millions of dedicated coffee drinkers.

Crown Royal will put a consumer’s name into the official title of a NASCAR race next year, in a contest that marks the first time the name of a major professional sporting event will be awarded to a consumer, Crown Royal said.

Volkswagen of America has hired product integration agency Creative Entertainment Services (CES) to develop brand building platforms in film and television properties. The car dealer plans to broaden its entertainment marketing capacity.